Microsoft to drop ActiveX, old plugins in new Edge browser

Edge, Microsoft's upcoming new browser, may drop support for older plugins - including Microsoft's 19-year-old ActiveX - to improve its security.

 

Crispin Cowan, senior program manager for Microsoft Edge, said they want to improve security over existing browsers.

 

"Microsoft introduced ActiveX in 1996, part of a wave of support for web browser extensions, enabling third parties to experiment with various forms of alternate content on the web," Cowan said.

 

But he said the extensions may cost a user security and reliability since they bring code and data into the browser’s process, with no protection.

 

Should anything go wrong with the extension, it can potentially take down or compromise the browser itself, he said.

 

Cowan likened the older, vulnerable plugins and extensions to "building a sun porch onto your house without locking the door to the sun porch."

 

With such a setup, he said "it is all too easy for a burglar to break into the sun porch, and from there loot the rest of your house."

 

Other security features to be built into Edge include:

 

- Defending users against trickery with stronger, more convenient credentials

 

- Defending against malicious websites and downloads via SmartScreen, originally introduced in Internet Explorer 8

 

- Defending against fake sites with Certificate Reputation

 

- embracing modern Web standards with the new rendering engine, Microsoft EdgeHTML

 

- Defending the browser against hacking

 

Edge will reportedly run 64-bit by default and will have defenses against memory corruption.

 

Meanwhile, Cowan said Microsoft will offer a Windows 10 Technical Preview Browser Bug Bounty program as an incentive for security researchers to report browser vulnerabilities to Microsoft.

 

Meanwhile, tech site Mashable also cited Microsoft's decoupling browser updates from the rest of the OS.

 

Such a move "also opens up the door for Microsoft to do the kind of automatic updates that Chrome and Firefox do now," it said. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News